Experiencing My First Air Raid Alert In Kyiv, Ukraine🇺🇦
Intro
Ukraine is a place that blew me out of the water in multiple ways, which I will touch on in different posts. Before I went, I was warned about the shock of sleeping in Kyiv on your first night there. Air raid alerts are frequent in Ukraine, especially in Kyiv (and anything East of the capital). Well, here is what my first experience was like.
Awoken
2 o'clock in the morning, I had just fallen asleep. An alarm goes off, but it isn't just any alarm; it is an air raid alert as the opposition has launched multiple Shahid drones at the capital. Only when "an increased threat" is deemed do the raid alerts get spread across the cities (the app covers all)?
Ukraine was under attack...
Funnily enough, I was staying at an ex-USSR hotel. I changed my clothes and headed downstairs to the shelter. It was eerily quiet, as the nightly curfew means no one in or out of properties between 12 am and 5 am unless they find a bomb shelter.
A man was sitting by the elevator, and he directed me downstairs towards the shelter. I was thinking
"There must be people down here, right?"
Nope, what I hadn't learned was that most citizens of Kyiv don't go into shelters anymore during air raid alerts. They have normalized this from the conversations I have had, and I cannot begin to imagine what it is like to have hear these alerts almost every night.
Needless to say, this was the last time I decided to visit the shelter, as people assured me that I would be alright if I stayed in my room thanks to the air defense systems.
Final Thoughts
Experiencing my first air raid alert was certainly a bit awakening and eye-opening, but I have realized that these alerts have become an everyday part of life for the citizens in Kyiv. I couldn't imagine what it is like having to hear this almost every day...
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